"You act as if you think the walls of Carris can protect us," old Jerimas said. "You put great faith in stone, even after all that has happened. Perhaps you should put faith in your King."

"I have faith in my King," Paladane argued. "But why does he burden me with contradictory commands?"

The counselors looked worried. Roland could see that they had too many questions and not enough answers. They looked as if they were already beaten.

The Duke glanced up, saw Roland, and his mouth dropped in surprise. "Sir Borenson? What are you doing here? Do you bring further direction from the King?"

"No," Roland said. "I'm not Sir Borenson, though we are kin."

Roland handed the message case to the Duke, who unrolled the parchment, glanced at it distractedly, and then handed it back to Roland with a curt "Thank you."

Reavers had overrun Keep Haberd, and Duke Paladane did not bat an eye.

"Milord?" Roland asked.

"I know," the Duke said. "Baron Poll brought the same message hours ago. There's nothing for it. We're under siege here, and the King's messengers simply ask me to flee!"

"Siege, milord?" Roland asked in surprise. Raj Ahten had not moved siege engines near the walls. Indeed, he seemed to have no troops within miles.

"Siege," the Duke said, as if Roland were simpleminded.

"Milord," Roland asked. "I was hoping to leave the castle. I have some friends hidden to the south, a young girl who needs me." He wanted to plead for license to become Averan's guardian, but knew that this was not the time.

The Duke considered for half a second. "No one leaves. It's too dangerous, and with the Blue Tower destroyed, our walls are hopelessly undermanned."

"Destroyed?" Roland asked, unsure he'd heard right.

The Duke nodded solemnly. "Every stone is down."

Roland choked back a cry of astonishment. He'd served as a Dedicate in the Blue Tower for twenty years. He might have been killed in his sleep there. He had escaped just in time.

But without force soldiers to man the walls of Carris, he realized, those who died in the Blue Tower might be the lucky ones. "How did it fall?" Roland dared to ask.

Paladane shrugged. "I don't know, but as far as we can tell, four hours ago, everyone in the tower was killed." He studied Roland with a critical eye. "You look like a Borenson. Tell me, have you any training in war?"

"I am a butcher by trade, milord."

Duke Paladane grunted, noted the half-sword tucked into his belt. "Now you're a guardsman. You'll take the south wall-between towers fifty-one and fifty-two. Gut any man or beast that comes over the wall. Understand? We'll be down to knife-work here before daybreak, and a butcher will be of use to me on the wall."

Roland stood, dumbfounded, until a squire led him to his post.

CHAPTER 28.

A PLOT UNMASKED.

By the time Erin Connal reached Castle Groverman on the banks of the Wind River, she felt no desire to celebrate. True, Gaborn had wakened from his faint an hour before and given the good news: The Darkling Glory was dead--or at least disembodied, made much less dangerous.

But Erin had been left horseless, and Prince Celinor had been injured by a falling brand. The skin on the back of his neck had burned and bubbled. With his endowments of stamina, the Prince would live, but he'd not have an easy recovery. By the time Erin had dragged him from under the burning logs, the pain of his wounds had Celinor gibbering and weeping like a child. He'd fallen unconscious shortly afterward, and so had been carried behind the saddle of one of Duke Groverman's men, and had gotten lost from Erin's sight during the ride.

Erin rode behind a knight from Jonnick into the bailey outside Duke Groverman's keep. Upon entering, she learned that she was not the first to arrive at the keep--far from it.

Hundreds of knights had already arrived and were feasting. Groverman's servants had brought baskets with loaves of bread into the bailey and dispensed the food freely while a serving woman opened flasks of ale. A great bank of fires lined the east wall, where cooking boys turned whole calves on spits. Minstrels played from a balcony of the Duke's Keep, and a crier beside the city gate welcomed them by shouting, "Eat your fill, gentleman. Eat your fill!"

The Duke spared nothing for the Earth King's army. But Erin was not yet ready to eat.

She went to find Celinor. Duke Groverman's men had laid him on a saddle blanket near a dark wall of the keep. Moonflowers grew along the wall, and now their pale white blossoms opened wide to the night air and the moths that fed on their nectar. A well-intentioned soldier was hunched over Celinor, trying to force whiskey down his throat.

"Drink, good sirrah," the knight said..."It will ease your pain."

But Celinor clenched his teeth, and, with tears of pain in his eyes, turned his head away. The knight tried to wrestle Celinor's head around, to force him to drink, obviously believing that the Prince was delirious.

"I'll have at him," Erin said, urging the knight to leave. "He'll take the poppy better."

"Perhaps," the knight said, "though I don't know why he'd prefer a bitter poppy to sweet whiskey."

"Find a physic and ask for the poppy," Erin said wearily, and she knelt by Celinor, brushed his brow. He was sweating, and looked up at her with pain-filled eyes.

"Thank you," he managed to whisper.

The Earth King had bidden him to put aside strong drink. Now Erin saw that he really would avoid it at any cost. "It's nothing," she told Celinor, then she held him a moment. He seemed to sleep.

At times he spoke deliriously, as if in evil dreams. Once he shouted and tried to push her away.

But after several long minutes, he woke. His eyes were glazed with pain, and sweat soaked his brow. "The Earth King has lost his endowments," he said. "I heard someone say it. Is it true?"

"Sure," Erin answered. "He's a common one now--if an Earth King can be called 'common.' "

"Then you can look upon him without his glamour. Have you seen him?"

She'd seen him on the ride toward Castle Groverman this evening, dead asleep. Even with his endowment of glamour, the young man had not been handsome. Now he looked downright plain.

"I saw him with my own eyes," she said, thinking Celinor's comment was merely a subject chosen by delirium.

She patted his cheek, noticed that he wore a silver chain around his neck with a silver oval locket.

As he fell back, wincing in pain, the silver locket fell out from his tunic, up by his throat. She knew immediately what it was--a promise locket. Many lords, when they had sons or daughters whom they sought to wed, would commission an artist to paint a miniature portrait of the young lord or lady who sought a match, and would then insert the portrait into a locket. Such a locket would then be sent to distant lands, to be shown to the parents of a prospective spouse, so that lords and ladies might choose a match for their son or daughter without ever having seen the person in question.

Such lockets were never trustworthy. The artists who painted them tended to ignore a child's flaws and accentuate his or her beauty to the point that sometimes the image on a locket bore only a slight resemblance to the young lord or lady pictured therein.

Still, such lockets often inspired romance. Erin recalled that when she was twelve, her mother had shown her the image of a young lord from Internook. Erin had carried the locket about for months, dreaming of the fierce-looking blond-haired lad, until it became clear that boy had seen Erin's own image on her promise locket and not been impressed.

Celinor seemed too old to be swooning after some child on a locket. He had to be twenty-five, and should have married years ago. But then Erin realized that no right thinking lady would have had him.

"What, Father?" she imagined some twelve-year-old girl asking. "You want me to wed the 'Sot of South Crowthen.' "

"Not the boy;" the father would say, "just the kingdom. And while he drinks himself into an early grave, he'll run about begetting b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on every tavern slattern within three kingdoms. And after you've slaughtered all his wee b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Crowthen will be yours."

She couldn't imagine any girl welcoming the match.

Yet Celinor wore a promise locket, like some lovesick boy.

Erin wondered what twelve-year-old girl had caught his fancy. She glanced at Celinor, who lay breathing heavily, apparently asleep.

She surrept.i.tiously flipped the tiny latch on the locket and caught her breath. The image of the twelve-year-old girl on it had blue eyes and long dark hair. She knew the painting instantly, even in the wan firelight reflecting from the far wall, for it was Erin's portrait, painted ten years ago, back when she'd dreamt that such portraits meant something.

Erin snapped the locket closed. No suitor had ever come begging for the hand of a girl from the horse clans of Fleeds. She wasn't sure what she'd have done if a suitor had come. She was a warrior, after all, not some fine lady raised with no more purpose than to bear a man sons. And it was only in kingdoms like Internook that a warlord sometimes wanted a wife who was strong enough to fight beside him.

Yet now Celinor wore her promise locket. Had he carried it for the past ten years?

Her mother might have sent it to South Crowthen, but Erin's mother had never mentioned a possible match with Celinor. No, Erin knew her mother well enough to be sure that even if King Anders had proposed such a match, her mother would have turned him down.

Yet Celinor had her locket, had kept it for ten years.

Had Celinor dreamt of such a match? It made sense, in a small way. South Crowthen shared a border with Fleeds. Celinor and Erin could have married, enlarged their kingdoms, despite the differences in their cultures.

But King Anders would have seen it as a bad match. Fleeds was a poor country, after all, with nothing to offer. If their parents exchanged lockets, it was only as a matter of courtesy. Neither lord would have wanted the match.

Yet Celinor had kept the locket for ten years, had perhaps even worn it for ten years.

Celinor the sot.

She looked into his face. He'd come awake. He stared at her with narrow, pain-filled eyes.

Erin's heart hammered.

"Tell me," Celinor asked with surprising ferocity. "Young King Orden, does he look like you?"

"What?" she begged in surprise. "I'd be a sorry sight if he did."

"Does he look like you?" Celinor asked "Like brother to sister, as my father says? No flame-headed man of Fleeds gave you that dark hair."

Erin felt her face flush with embarra.s.sment. She'd been imagining that he loved her. Now she saw the truth of it: Gaborn's father, King Orden, had made an annual pilgrimage to Heredon for the autumn hunt with King Sylvarresta. On those pilgrimages, he'd pa.s.sed through Fleeds, and had become a friend to Erin's mother.

If her mother had thought Orden to be a suitable match, it was only reasonable that she'd have wanted to breed with him. It could have happened. But it hadn't.

Still, both Erin and Gaborn had black hair and blue eyes, though Erin had her mother's build, not King Orden's broad shoulders.

So King Anders imagined that King Mendellas Draken Orden was her father, making Gaborn her half brother--her younger brother.

Erin dared not name her true father.

On the day that Erin had first begun her monthly bleed, her mother had taken Erin to the study, shown her a book that named her sires, told of each man's and woman's times and deeds. They were great men and women, heroes of old, and her mother had made Erin swear to keep the tradition, to breed with only the finest of men.

Erin knew the name of her father, but under the circ.u.mstances, she thought it better not to reveal her patronage.

"Is that the only reason you wear my promise locket?" Erin asked. "You wanted to measure my face to his?"

Celinor licked his lips, nodded barely. "My father.. seeks to expose Gaborn's deceit, label him a criminal."

Erin wondered. If she were Gaborn's brother, what would be the repercussions?

By the laws of Fleeds, having a royal father from another realm meant nothing. Erin's t.i.tle as a royal was handed down from her mother, but even that t.i.tle would not allow Erin to become the High Queen. That post would have to be earned, bestowed by the wise women of the clans.

But if Erin were Orden's daughter, it might have tremendous repercussions in Mystarria. Some might claim that she, as the eldest, was the rightful heir to Mystarria's throne.

King Anders wanted to use her as a p.a.w.n.

"I--I'm not following you," she said. "What could your father hope to gain? I'd never want the throne of Mystarria!"

"Then he would thrust it upon you," Celinor whispered.

"f.a.gh! That would be a lot of trouble for nothing. I'd have no part of it."

"You know the laws of succession: No man can be crowned a king who has won the throne by murder," Celinor answered.

She wondered. Yesterday, before he'd met Gaborn, the High Marshal Skalbairn had warned that King Anders was spreading rumors that Gaborn had fled Longmot, leaving his father to die. Such a deed might not technically be counted as murder, but it was akin to murder.

And after the death of King Orden, was it not Gaborn's own bodyguard who had slaughtered the witless King Sylvarresta? Borenson swore that in doing so, he only fulfilled the last command spoken to him by old King Orden, to slaughter those who had given themselves as Dedicates to Raj Ahten.

But one could easily argue that Borenson told such a tale to cover the truth--that he'd murdered Sylvarresta in order for his master to gain Heredon's throne.

Gaborn now wore a double crown of kingship--that of Heredon and that of Mystarria. But Anders would argue that both crowns had been won through murder.

Thus Gaborn was not a king at all. And if he was not rightfully the king of any nation, then how could he be the Earth King?

And if Gaborn was not a king, he could justifiably be dispatched, dealt with as a murderer.

She saw it all in a flash, realized that Anders would start his war. He was probably already sending out minor lords to gather support. He had blocked his borders and forbade his people to come to Heredon to see the Earth King.

After all, if they saw Gaborn, they might be persuaded that he was indeed the Earth King. And King Anders did not want them to learn the truth.

Yet Erin knew the truth. She'd heard Gaborn's Voice in her head, leading her to safety. She knew him to be the Earth King.

"What foul notions your father has, to make up such things!"

Celinor laughed painfully, as much from his burns as from the sentiment that followed. "Some think me to be much like him."

"You didn't need to whip your horse to a froth to check out your father's story," Erin said. "So why are you here?"

"My father sent me to gain any information that might help expose Gaborn. But I came to learn the truth."

Just then, a healer woman brought the poppy resin, along with a small ivory pipe that she would use to blow the opium into Celinor's face. She set the pipe down, rolled the opium into a dark ball, then set it in the bowl of the pipe and added a hot coal from an ornate clay brazier.